There is a certain irony in Shabazz Napier's pleadings. The UConn guard has never been one to shy away from taking shots, at least not in those spurts he always seems to have.

Yet he is begging teammate Tyler Olander to shoot more. Olander resists the urge to tell Napier he might get more shots if the junior guard would leave some for him. Napier has an easy retort for that.

"I tell him to look for the ball in (isolation) and be strong with it," Napier said. "He backed down guys (Tuesday night) and showed his talent. He did all the things we know Tyler can do. He just needs to do more of it."

Olander, a 6-foot-10 junior, has asserted himself much more in the first two games, particularly in Tuesday night's victory against Vermont. Olander filled up the stat sheet like he never has before, scoring nine points and getting the same number of rebounds while posting four assists and four blocked shots.

Napier and fellow guard Ryan Boatright are rightfully

See OLANDER, Page 6C

the keys for the No. 23 Huskies (2-0), but Olander is just about the only true inside presence UConn possesses. The better Olander is, the more complete the Huskies will be.

He and the rest of the Huskies get a true test of their stamina at the Paradise Jam in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. UConn will play three games in four days starting tonight against Wake Forest (1-0). By the end of it, the Huskies will have traveled more than 11,000 miles in the first two weeks of the season.

And by the end, they might have discovered a reliable interior player.

"He's not a step slow," UConn coach Kevin Ollie said of Olander. "Last year he might have been a step slow. Now he's reacting better. He's just playing with confidence. He's understanding his role on this team. He's coming out with the mentality that he's not going to give in, he's not going to hang his head, he's going to continue to focus on what he needs to do."

It's not necessarily scoring. Napier and Boatright take care of that load, but getting eight or nine points a game from Olander will surely free the guards to do more damage. Thus far, Olander has chosen his spots to score and has done it mostly inside. In his first two years, the presence of Alex Oriakhi meant Olander could take his dangerous jump shot outside.

He can still do that, but the lefty can cause problems inside for opponents. He is big, he is strong and he passes about as well as any big man UConn has ever had. Olander already has eight assists, second only to Boatright's 11.

The game just looks different to Olander this year.

"It's definitely coming to me at a much easier pace," Olander said. "That just comes with experience. Last year I was getting a lot of minutes and not knowing what to do with them all the time. Now I'm more confident with playing through whole possessions."

Ollie has something to do with that. The first mistake doesn't result in a place on the bench for any of Ollie's players. Like many before him, Olander lived in fear that Jim Calhoun would pull him the first time he traveled or committed a foul.

Now Olander can just play, focusing on rebounding and getting the ball into the hands of his guards so the fast break can get moving. The man at the center of that undersized front line might just be the basis for everything because he can do everything well enough, except for putting the ball on the floor.

"He does everything," Napier said. "He's the foundation. He's a structure for us. He gets in there and he fights for those rebounds. He's more confident than he was last year. That's what we want him to be."

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